By BECKY KISER
Hays Post

“Think of it as a gym membership, but instead of access to workout equipment you have a membership to access to office equipment.”

That’s how Aaron White, executive director of the Ellis Co. Coalition for Economic Development (ECCED) describes a new coworking office facility, The Gateway, scheduled to open late this year in downtown Hays at 219 West 10th Street in a former furniture rental store.

“It’s coworking or shared office space targeted to people who’ve been operating a home-based business and the home environment no longer meets their needs, or telecommuters working for a company outside of Hays or even the state,” White explained. “It can be difficult to separate home and work life due to distractions but maybe they don’t need full-blown private office.”

The building will be renovated and fitted for open work stations with access to a commercial quality combination copier, printer, fax and scanner, and high-speed internet. There will private offices to use as needed for confidentiality, a basement conference room, a training room and, of course, a coffee brew bar. Members will have access to the facility 24/7.  “They can be there on their own schedule with everything necessary to facilitate their work,” White said.

Basic memberships will be available by the month, likely a fee of $150 a month. “There’s a dedicated level that provides additional services and gives members access to a dedicated work station they can consider their own and actually leave things there,” White explained, “but it can also be rented by the week or even by the day.”

White used the scenario of a salesperson who needs to be in Hays for a few days to talk with clients but doesn’t necessarily want to work out of a motel room. “That person can utilize this space for a couple of days as needed.”

 

The building that once was the site of Sears is at ground level and has a sub-basement with a total square footage of 7,000 feet. “We figure we have the capacity for about 80 members,” said White.

Plans for the space have been underway since last fall. An online survey targeting at-home workers initially yielded 15 people who were interested in a shared office space. Other business people have expressed enthusiasm after the proposal was presented to several civic groups.

“One gentleman came up after a Hays Kiwanis meeting and said it was exactly what he’d like to do. He moved to Hays because his employer had an office here but it’s since closed and he said he hates working at home. He has options because his company has offices in other communities. This is something that can keep him in Hays.

“We think this can attract people to Hays. How many people have moved away, love the area and want to come back, but don’t want to leave their current employer? If the employer is open to telecommuting, this is a facility for those people to come back home and have a place where they can still work for their existing employer and have the quality of life they’re looking for in Hays and western Kansas.”

Renovations must be made before the facility can open.

“The whole project is being funded by a generous $600,000 grant from the Dane G. Hansen Foundation,” White said. “We’ll be purchasing the building and then doing a large amount of renovation. A lot of it will be demolition work, cleaning it out, working with local businesses to outfit it and set it up to facilitate open office spaces and get the lounge/break area ready to go. There’s a lot of work to be done but the funding is in place so we’re ready to start moving forward.”

The Coalition is donating $50,000 to the project and is looking for opportunities for other groups to make in-kind donations and receive recognition. “We really want this to be a community project,” he stressed.  A local designer, SjB Design, is being used to create an industrial motif for the facility.  Eagle Communications has donated 1 GB of high speed internet for the building during its first two years of operation.

According to White, this will be the first coworking space in western Kansas. “We’re very excited to see this happen,” he said.

During research and tours of similar facilities in Manhattan and Wamego, White said they expected to find the set-up attracts people in the tech industry such as software engineers and app developers.  They also discovered it’s also being used by sales companies, start-up insurance companies, attorneys who are just starting out and even photography studios.

“For a lot of photographers, they’re shooting on site and they just need a place to throw down a laptop and edit photos. The digital age of photography has made a facility like this quite usable.”

“The sky’s the limit for who’s going to utilize this type of facility.”

A Facebook page has been created for The Gateway, which will include updates on the renovation progress and it will later have its own web site. A full-scale marketing plan to attract members will be implemented, including a lot of social media.

White expects a lot of the promotion will be by word-of-mouth. “We’d love to see potential members reach out to us because we’d like to get their input on the facility as we’re doing the renovations.  We’ll be holding a number of ‘sit-downs’ during the reconstruction to show them what we’re doing and to build some interest.”

Once The Gateway is up and running, there are plans for weekly events including training seminars, lunch and learns, and guest speakers to talk about issues of interest to the members.

The co-working facility will be operated and coordinated by the Ellis County Development Corporation, which has a 501c3 non-profit designation.

For just a one day use, the person would stop by the Coalition office in the Hays Welcome Center, 2700 Vine, to sign up and pay for it. Most of the time, the scheduling for users will be done primarily online.

“There are number of software programs designed specifically to manage coworking space.  The general membership will all be handled online including payment and account management. Ultimately, we want to go to a pass card security system to access the building,” he added. “There’s another software package that turns a cellphone into a pass key to get into the building that links into the membership manager software. When the membership expires, that app is disabled and they don’t go into the building any more.  It’s really hands-off. A lot of these facilities around the country have no permanent staff; it’s handled exclusively online.

“In the coworking spaces, we visited there were folks who come in after five o’clock or on weekends.  It’s really designed to fit their schedules, very flexible, to be used when needed.

“A coworking space is really a community, a community of folks working together who can potentially share and collaborate on projects. When you’re working at home, there’s a little bit of isolation and it’s difficult to run ideas past your peers who aren’t there,” White said with a smile. “That community atmosphere is what often attracts folks to this type of facility.”

For more information about The Gateway, call the ECCED at 785-628-3102.

(Disclosure: Eagle Communications is the parent company of Hays Post.)